Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
![Loading indicator](/images/ajax-loader-bar.gif)
Madness is central to Western tragedy in all epochs, but we find the origins of this centrality in early Greece: in Homeric insight into the "damage a damaged mind can do." Greece, and especially tragedy, gave the West its permanent perception of madness as violent and damaging.
Drawing on her deep knowledge of anthropology, psychoanalysis, Shakespeare, and the history of madness, as well as of Greek language and literature, Ruth Padel probes the Greek language of madness, which is fundamental to tragedy: translating, making it reader-friendly to nonspecialists, and showing how Greek images continued through medieval and Renaissance societies into a "rough tragic grammar" of madness in the modern period.
This intensely poetic and solidly argued book is a rare source of "knowledge that it is sad to have to know." It focuses on the problematic relation of madness and God, discussing en route such topics as the double bind, black bile and melancholy, the Derrida-Foucault debate on writing (about) madness, Christian folly, "fine frenzy," shamanism, psychoanalysts on tragedy, St. Paul on God's "hardening the heart," links between madness and murder, pollution and syphilis, and the Irish for "mad."
Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
![Loading indicator](/images/ajax-loader-bar.gif)
Edition | Availability |
---|---|
1
Whom gods destroy: elements of Greek and tragic madness
1995, Princeton University Press
in English
0691033609 9780691033600
|
zzzz
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
2
Whom Gods Destroy
December 11, 1995, Princeton University Press
Paperback
in English
0691025886 9780691025889
|
aaaa
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
Book Details
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Community Reviews (0)
Feedback?July 16, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
August 27, 2020 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
December 4, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Added subjects from MARC records. |
April 28, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Linked existing covers to the work. |
December 9, 2009 | Created by WorkBot | add works page |